Method Today - Redescribing Approaches to the Study of Religion - Brad Stoddard
3. Comparison and the Production of Knowledge
Method Today - Redescribing Approaches to the Study of Religion - Brad Stoddard
Thomas Carrico [+]
Florida State University
Thomas J. Carrico, Jr. is a PhD candidate at Florida State University’s Department of Religion. Focusing on the matchstick industry in Victorian England, Carrico’s dissertation elucidates social, political, and economic constraints on moral reasoning, especially in response to industrial disease.
Description
This response uses debates within comparative religious ethics to elucidate the institutional elements of comparative scholarship. Utilizing Karl Marx’s distinction between abstract and concrete labor, I argue for a more explicit differentiation between comparison as a methodology and comparison as a discipline or formal field of study.